THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # THIRTY-SIX -- l5 DECEMBER 2005

Although we're not yet officially in bleak midwinter, frosty winds have certainly been making moan across our first significant fall of snow. Yes, the landscape here and in wide swathes of the country now features much frolic architecture, as Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized the effect of those frozen flakes. We have a good example right outside the front door, where our buggy sits snugly encased, the white mound on its roof topped with a wind-driven twig of spruce, putting us in mind of an enormous (if misshapen) Christmas pudding.

We're all familiar with that eerie hush snow carries in the fold of its bleached-out mantle. Today, however, will be less quiet, for a chorus of dismay will soon begin to arise hither and yon as this issue of Orphan Scrivener hits the aether and -- akin to unsuspecting pedestrians slipping on those patches of pathway certain gamins assiduously doused with water in the winters of our misspent youth -- slides in its unbalanced way willy nilly into your email box.